A warehouse management system (“WMS”) assists in the management of movement and storage of materials within a warehouse. It automates and centralizes the management of inventory levels, stock locations, material receiving, packing and shipping. A WMS is a key part of the supply chain and primarily aims to control the movement and storage of materials within a warehouse and process the associated transactions, including shipping, receiving, putaway and picking. These systems also direct and optimize stock putaway based on real-time information about the status of bin utilization. Warehouse management systems often utilize auto identification (“ID”) data capture (“AIDC”) technology, such as barcode scanners, mobile computers, wireless local area networks (“WLANs”), and potentially radio-frequency identification (“RFID”) to efficiently monitor the flow of products. Once data has been collected, there is typically either a batch synchronization with, or a real-time wireless transmission to, a central database. The database can then provide useful reports about the status of goods in the warehouse.
The objective of a WMS is to provide a set of computerised procedures to handle the receipt of stock and returns into a warehouse facility, model and manage the logical representation of the physical storage facilities (e.g., racking etc), manage the stock within the facility, and enable a seamless link to order processing and logistics management in order to pick, pack, and ship product out of the facility. A WMS can be a stand alone system, or modules of an enterprise resource planning (“ERP”) system or supply chain execution suite. The primary purpose of a WMS is to control the movement and storage of materials within a warehouse. As such, a WMS may be described as the legs at the end-of-the line which automates store, traffic, and shipping management. In its simplest form, a WMS can data track products during the production process and act as an interpreter and message buffer between existing ERP and WMS systems.
Today, concept of warehouse management is not limited to just managing within the boundaries of a warehouse, rather, it is much wider and extends beyond the physical boundaries of the warehouse. Inventory management, inventory planning, cost management, information technology (“IT”) applications, and communication technology may all be related to warehouse management. In addition, item or container storage, loading, and unloading may also be covered by warehouse management. Warehouse management may be a part of supply chain management (“SCM”) and demand management systems. Even production management is to a good extent dependent on warehouse management. Efficient warehouse management gives a cutting edge advantage to a retail chain distribution company. Warehouse management does not just start with receipt of material, rather, it may start with the initial planning of container design for a product or item. Warehouse design and process design within the warehouse (e.g., wave picking) may also be considered as a part of warehouse management. As such, warehouse management may be considered as a part of logistics and SCM applications. Warehouse management may include monitoring the progress of products through the warehouse. As such, it involves the physical warehouse infrastructure, tracking systems, and communication between product stations. Warehouse management may deal with receipt, storage, and movement of goods (i.e., normally finished goods) to intermediate storage locations or to final customers. In a multi-echelon model for distribution, there are levels of warehouses, starting with the central warehouse(s), regional warehouses serviced by the central warehouse, and retail warehouses at the third level serviced by the regional warehouses, and so on. The objective of warehouse management is to help in optimizing costs of timely order fulfillment by managing resources economically. Thus, warehouse management is equivalent to the management of storage of products and services rendered on the products within the walls of a warehouse.
One aspect of warehouse management relates to providing instructions to operators or personnel within the warehouse (e.g., for picking items). Existing warehouse management applications provide user task instructions through textual information. With these existing applications, the operator is required to read and interpret what is to be performed. This is problematic as it often provides challenges to operators relating to: literacy requirements for operators; language difficulties if an operator's mother language is not the displayed language; and, transposition of numerical data. In these existing warehouse management applications, product information, units of measure, location identifiers, etc., are generally in text form and small differences, particularly in long text strings, are not easily deciphered. Short text information also provides no contextual information relative to identification of the source for data collection. For example, on a label with multiple barcodes, which one is the correct one that represents the serial number for the item?
Solutions have been suggested to these problems. For example, in some warehouse management applications, textual instructions have been replaced with voice instructions similar to navigating through voice mail options on a telephone system. These applications tend to rely on voice commands and responses as an alternative to text messaging. While these applications have the advantage of freeing the operator's hands and eliminating some language and literacy issues, they also have drawbacks such as operator fatigue and concentration issues during long shifts. They also do not provide any visual clues with respect to the instructions to be performed.
A need therefore exists for an improved method and system for providing warehouse operators with instructions. Accordingly, a solution that addresses, at least in part, the above and other shortcomings is desired.